Plays Political

This is a collection of five plays by Arthur Milner. They were first produced between 1984 and 1990, during a period when the author was playwright-in-residence at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa, Canada. All feature Milner’s fast-paced dialogue, quick and unexpected humor, and sharp political eye.

(Applause Books). Warning: The plays of Political Stages do not make for a quiet evening of theatre. These are the plays which got audiences out of their seats, and sometimes out into the streets. Their words and ideas rumbled ominously down the marble hallways of legislatures and challenged, even threatened, and often changed, the thinking of millions. These are the plays which either lit or reflected the fires of those political controversies which blazed across the American Twentieth Century. Individually, each is a molotov cocktail tossed onto the stage, each a political movement encapsulated in dramatic form. Combined, they constitute both a conflagration and a record of American political and theatrical ideology. Never before, however, have they been collected in one explosive volume. In Political Stages , they have at last been preserved, ever ready to serve at the barricades of subsequent eras. Includes works by Tennessee Williams, Emily Mann, Clifford Odets, Langston Hughes, and others.

While some of Shaw’s earlier plays are still performed, his later plays, such as the ones in this volume, are barely known. As the collective title indicates, the themes here are political; yet, frankly, it is doubtful how seriously we can now take Shaw as a political thinker. Despite writing in the 1930s, he has little to say of the nature of totalitarianism: although he satirises Fascist dictators in “Geneva”, the satire is disappointingly mild. Neither did Shaw appear to foresee (on the evidence of these plays, at least) the imminent collapse of the British Empire.But it is Shaw the dramatist rather than Shaw the political philosopher who still holds our attention – even in plays as explicitly political as these. He had a sharp intellect and a quirky sense of humour, and his dialogue still glints and sparkles: he couldn’t write a dull line if he tried. No matter how serious the themes he addresses, the crispness of his writing and his lightness of touch still scintillate.Shaw seems, perhaps unfairly, out of fashion nowadays. But even in these lesser-known works, he demonstrates his matchless ability, still undimmed, to provoke and to entertain.

American Political Plays after 9/11 is a diverse collection of bold, urgent, and provocative plays that respond to the highly charged, post 9/11 political landscape. Sparked by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequently fueled by a series of controversial events—the Iraq war, the passing and enforcement of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, and the revelation of torture and other scandals at the Abu Ghraib prison—American political theater is currently experiencing a surge in activity. The plays in this collection include The Guys by Anne Nelson, At the Vanishing Point by Naomi Iizuka, The Venus de Milo Is Armed by Kia Corthron, Back of the Throat by Yusseff El Guindi, Three Nights in Prague by Allan Havis, and Question 27, Question 28 by Chay Yew. The characters range from a New York City fire captain trying to respectfully memorialize eight of his lost comrades, to the citizens of a hog-killing Louisville neighborhood who poignantly exemplify the underside of the economic crisis, to an Arab American citizen being harshly (and possibly unfairly) interrogated by two officers as a “person of interest.” Though not all of the plays deal explicitly with the Al Qaeda attacks, they collectively reveal themes of sorrow and anxiety, moral indignation, alarmist self-preservation, and economic and social insecurity stemming from the United States’ fairly sudden shift from cold war superpower to vulnerable target. The lively introduction by Allan Havis includes a brief history of political theater in the United States, an extensive discussion about how theater communities responded to 9/11, and an informative analysis of the six plays in the book. A collection of dramatic material framed by this significant historical event, AmericanPolitical Plays after 9/11 will be indispensable for theater and cultural studies scholars and students.

William Congreve was deeply involved in the events of his turbulent times. That involvement reveals itself in works which have sometimes been regarded as entirely unengaged with the realities of his society. This book attempts to read Congreve’s plays and his novella, Incognita, against the political and social upheaval of the period initiated by the rebellion of 1688. A strong supporter of the new world ushered in by William III and Mary, Congreve fought against the reactionary politics of the Jacobite opposition.

Among the most influential poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes is perhaps best remembered for the innovative use of jazz rhythms in his writing. While his poetry and essays received much public acclaim and scholarly attention, Hughes' dramas are relatively unknown. Only five of the sixty-three plays Hughes scripted alone or collaboratively have been published (in 1963). Published here, for the first time, are four of Hughes' most poignant, poetic, and political dramas, Scottsboro Limited, Harvest (also known as Blood on the Fields), Angelo Herndon Jones, and De Organizer. Each play reflects Hughes' remarkable professionalism as a playwright as well as his desire to dramatize the social history of the African American experience, especially in the context of the labor movements of the 1930s and their attempts to attract African American workers. Hughes himself counted prominent members of these leftist groups among his close friends and patrons; he formed a theater group with Whittaker Chambers, prompting an FBI investigation of Hughes and his writing in the 1930s. These plays, while easily read as idealistic propaganda pieces for the left, are nonetheless reflective of Hughes' other more influential and studied works. The first scholar to offer a systematic study of Hughes' plays, Susan Duffy provides an informed introduction as well as a detailed analysis of each of the four plays. Each chapter begins with locating the play at a moment in the social history of the 1930s. Then Duffy analyzes the rhetorical strategies employed throughout the script, focusing on the political ideologies attacked as well as the ideologies endorsed. Duffy also establishes that De Organizer,a collaboration with noted jazz pianist and composer James P. Johnson (who also wrote its score) was indeed performed by the Labor Stage. Throughout the analysis of Scottsboro Limited, Harvest, Angelo Herndon Jones, and De Organizer, Duffy returns to the questions of Hughes' motives for writing these works: Were they merely didactic plays attempting to please Hughes' leftist patrons or heartfelt leftist political propaganda? By making these forgotten texts available, and by presenting them within a scholarly discussion of 1930s leftist political movements, Duffy seeks to spark a renewed interest in Langston Hughes as an American playwright and political figure.

What does it mean for a play to be political in the 21st century? Does it require explicit engagement with events and situations with the aim of bringing about change or highlighting social wrongs? Is it purely a matter of content or is it also a matter of structure? The Contemporary Political Play: Rethinking Dramaturgical Structure examines the politics of contemporary 'political' drama. It traces the origins of the contemporary British political play to the emergence of the idea of 'serious drama' in the late 19th century through the work of Bernard Shaw, and argues that a Shavian version of serious drama was inextricably linked to the social and political structures of British society at the time. While political drama is still often thought of as adhering to a Shavian model in which social issues are presented through a dialectical structure, Grochala argues that the different political structures of contemporary Britain give rise to formally inventive dramaturgies that are no less 'serious' or political than their Shavian forebears. Through analysing the experimental dramaturgies of contemporary plays by playwrights including Caryl Churchill, Simon Stephens, Anthony Neilson, debbie tucker green and Mark Ravenhill, among others, it offers a set of new principles for understanding how a play functions politically and reveals how today the dramaturgical structure of a play is as political as its content.

Daniel Mendelsohn makes use of insights into classical Greek conceptions of gender and Athenian notions of civic identity to demonstrate that the plays 'Children of Herakles' and 'Suppliant Women' by Euripides are subtle and coherent exercises in political theorizing.